


The Makings of a Wasteland Queen

by hiddencait



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cassandra never attended the Academy, Cassandra never became a Judge, Discussions of Cannibalism, Gen, canon level trigger warnings, discussions of child sex slavery (sexual assault off screen), discussions of death by cancer, discussions of pedophilia, discussions of starvation, psychic murder, seriously y'all it's a Dredd fic here be monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:16:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait
Summary: The rise of a Wasteland Queen and encounters with Judges in the Cursed Earth.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Makings of a Wasteland Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alamorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/gifts).



> God I love this fandom, and even with a stripped down sign up, this offered me so many fun concepts to play with! And bonus, this is officially the longest fic I've ever done for Yuletide & I am super happy with it. This didn't quite end up the Cursed Earth Western I was hoping to pull off, but I hope it still appeals to your Cursed Earth obsession!
> 
> Much love to @seren_ccd for helping me sort out the way to tell the story I wanted to tell!

America is an irradiated wasteland. Within it lies a city. Outside the boundary walls, a desert. A cursed earth. Yet, the desert is not empty, not lifeless. Mutants, clans, cannibals: all make their home under the scorching sun in the scrub land. They know the Judgements of the law inside the Mega-Cities hold no sway in the Cursed Earth. Only survival matters, both your own and those under your protection. To the desert dwellers, Judges are the next thing to myths, and near as useless.

But sometimes, sometimes they venture out into the wastelands. Sometimes, they even prove themselves proper Judges, survivors, just like the rest of those in the Cursed Earth.

But only sometimes.

\---

Thefirst Judge Cassandra ever saw might as well have been a ghost, far away as he was, visible only by the size of his ‘cycle and the faint flash of light on his armor down below in the atrium at the entrance to the mega-block she’d grown up in.

Or _her_ armor and ‘cycle maybe. Cassandra had seen on the vids that men and women (and enbies probably too, though damned if they ever showed up on any of the vids – something Aisling was eternally pissed off about, even years later out in the Cursed Earth and years away from even accessing a vidscreen) could be Judges. Even the Chief Judge of Mega City One was supposedly a woman currently.

Not that the gender of the Judge mattered really. It was just… It was something that might have made the figure seem more _real._ More solid and less of a lie. Because the wall, and the Sectors drawn right up against it… Well, they rarely saw Judges, and Cassandra, had only caught them on the vidfeeds when she was even younger than seven, before their apartment’s vidservice was cut off for non-payment. Seeing one close up and in person – that might have made things easier. Or at least made it easier to believe things _could_ get easier.

Some said the Judges were meant to come for orphans when they turned nine, were supposed to take those children away for a new life in the Hall of Justice, assuming they passed the Academy. Neither Cassandra nor the other kids on their floor of their slum-like mega-block had been that lucky. They’d been left lost and forgotten by ones meant to protect them, and so, they had to protect themselves.

And Cassandra was the one most capable of doing so, even though she was years younger than some of the others. She’d been just barely ten years old when she decided it was time to leave, time for their captor to die.

The medic who arrived called it an aneurism. Cassandra knew better, and so did the other girls. That was why they followed her out of the block and to the wall only a few hundred meters from their homes. Then into the tunnels, to the place only “mutants” belonged. Cassandra hadn’t really understood the term before the tunnels, but there, she learned. There she grew to _know._ And in knowing, to survive.

Safety for her and hers cost more lives down in the darkness. Cassandra wasn’t the only one to kill in their little band of Lost Girls and Boys. But she was the most effective, and thus in time, was the one most suited for taking charge.

She was lucky the other tunnel- and desert-dwellers feared her, Cassandra knew. Lucky the danger of a mind like hers made the temptation of a body untouched by physical mutation, or at least visibly so, something best to think on only instead of act upon. Or, with her gifts, best not to think on at all, as some learned to their discomfort. Over the years in the tunnels, in the wasteland, the Cursed Earth, there had been some, too drugged or vicious or ignorant to know better, who’d tried to take her, force her into a coupling that had nothing of mutual release, only forced compliance.

They’d learned better. Granted they hadn’t lived long enough for that newfound knowledge to be of use to them, but before the end, they’d learned better.

Once, when she still had parents, had still been something like a child, Cassandra might have believed in mercy, but life after their loss had taught her differently. Some folks might try to be kind, might try to care for those less fortunate than themselves, and indeed those least fortunate often were those who tried the hardest to cling to kindness, but “some” was not “all.” Was not even “most.”

Two years she’d waited after her parents succumbed to cancer for someone to rescue her after her parents’ landlord kicked her out. He’d offered her the “choice” of “earning income” with some of the other girls he had locked away in another “unpaid” apartment, but even at seven years old, she’d known how dark that life would be. She’d seen it, or perhaps _Seen_ it in the minds of his captives. She’d Heard her parents worry over whether they’d be able to keep their pretty young girl safe from those who would use her, possess her.

There was supposed to be laws to keep such things from happening, or so Cassandra had known on an intellectual level. There were supposed to be lots of laws, and justice, and Judges to defend those things.

For a time, the landlord turned child pimp had turned a blind eye to her squatting in service closets and unoccupied units. Selling her services would have earned creds, sure, but Cassandra had heard him remind himself that she was still a little young, a little too green for his personal tastes. Eleven was his personal favorite, his preferred sweet spot. Cassandra had known she couldn’t let herself turn eleven while still within his walls.

And so he’d died instead, seizing on the floor of his living room while his current pets watched him, none of them offering even the help of calling for the medic on level Twenty-Five. Then, when his mind was finally empty of everything, even pain, even lust, the girls left, following Cassandra as she led the way out into the halls, stopping only to let the rest of his stable free, having claimed the door codes from his mind while he died.

It was that mass exodus of children that had the medic calling for the Judges, even knowing them unlikely to answer. There was just something _off_ about the group and about the young girl who kept herself firmly in the lead of the little band. The medic wasn’t sure he thought them… _murderous_ exactly, and fuck if he hadn’t been the one himself to determine cause of death to be an aneurysm, but...

But the kids, the kids got him spooked, and so he did what he was supposed to and called a Judge.

He was as shocked as the rest of them that the Judge actually showed. But they or she or he hadn’t even bothered interviewing the kid. Hadn’t done anything more than collect the body, and then only because the perp in another case involving child slavery several ‘blocks over had mentioned the dead landlord by name as one of his best suppliers.

So really, the aneurysm had saved the Judge a step. And if the kids seemed off, well wouldn’t anyone that had been victim to a sick fuck like that one?

The Judge did claim they’d report the number of orphans to the Hall of Justice for possible academy recruitment, but in the hassle of calling for a meat wagon, they forgot.

…It wasn’t like the Academy would miss the addition of these kids, after all. There were always orphans in Mega-City One.

\---

The first Judge that ever helped Cassandra didn’t even mean to do it, she didn’t think. Next to no one meant to help anyone else down in the tunnels, not unless they were family, whether found or blood.

All told there were thirteen children who escaped to the tunnels the day of Cassandra’s first kill. Not all of them would survive, but none of them regretted leaving. By the time the little clan of kids left the tunnels for the desert beyond, all but six of their number were gone, taken away by cancer faster than any of them expected. The few hundred meters from the block to the wall had apparently protected them more than they’d ever expected.

It was hard to watch. Being helpless while cancer took her parents had been brutal enough, but watching it cut down children, and worse, the children she had tried so hard to save, had nearly broken Cassandra. It was only a promise to Allan, the oldest of the group at fourteen the day of their escape and one of the first to die, that kept her going. She’d sworn to him that she’d protect the others, no matter what, however she could. Losing herself to the tunnels wasn’t an option after that, not even with less than half of her charges surviving.

She had to live, she told herself. Had to find a way to get stronger, to fight back against anyone who threatened them, no matter how powerful, no matter how dangerous.

That had led her to stalk some of the predators below, to read them as long as she could, tracking their movements and how they took their prey: by force and superior strength, by guile and a better set of eyes to see in the dark and the gloom, by speed and ambushes, taking down the slow and stupid and weak.

Cassandra told herself that she and her siblings would be none of those things. And the first thing that would help them toward that goal was food. Protein, plain and simple, was something they all needed. Their landlord turned pimp hadn’t exactly fed them well in the ‘block, preferring his stable to be on the almost starving side, the better to be both weak and desperate enough not to fight his johns (unless they liked that sort of thing). She’d made out better than the others, even squatting in service closets. She’d been able to scrounge farther, begging scraps from neighbors across the floor or digging through the trash cans in the food district. It wasn’t a full belly, ever, not really, but she could keep eating until she was no longer hungry if she found enough food. The others were _always_ hungry.

That hadn’t changed in the tunnels, though it was better than it had been. There were more of them to scrounge about now instead of just her, and they always, _always_ shared with each other. Cassandra wasn’t sure what to think of that kind of loyalty. It was new to her, and even though she was a child, she wasn’t naïve enough to think that kind of trust came easily, or that many people _deserved_ that trust. Her new family seemed to though, and she didn’t want to let them down. And she was still the healthiest of them, more so with some of the others sickening by the day within the radiation heavy tunnels.

Even as the youngest of them, it was up to her to shoulder the bulk of their needs. No one had to tell her that. It was that thought that sent her to the edges of the tunnels and out into the open air of the city itself, back to the world that had been so dangerous for them. Her scavenging took her farther and farther afield, raiding big commercial trash bins and leftover food on plates at outdoor cafes.

Cassandra tried not to steal, though it was less out of care for the law and more because while folks pitied a beggar child, they had no sympathy for a thieving one. And she couldn’t feed her people if she was shoved in a juvie Iso cube somewhere.

Still there were moments when she didn’t have a choice, when digging through trash wasn’t enough to feed them all, or when she got jumped in the tunnels and her hard won scores taken from her by others just as desperate as she was. She’d been scoping out a restaurant to try to hit, one large enough that food might not be missed from the kitchens, though they were too tight fisted to leave much in the trash. Cassandra had almost convinced herself to dart in and grab a cooked steak resting on a counter right within her line of sight huddled and hidden as she was near the open back door, when the Judge appeared in the alleyway, hollering some command for the restaurant’s employees to come out with their hands up.

She didn’t know if there was another Judge at the front of the building to stop them from running or not, but that’s what they did, pots and pans flying through the air and carts shoved every which way as the line cooks and wait staff tried to stay one step ahead of the Judge charging in after them.

In only seconds, the kitchen was deserted. Cassandra could hear the commotion in the front of the restaurant, and she let herself _Listen_ to make sure no one would head back in at an inopportune moment. Then, she hurried in, doing her best to stay quiet as she bundled up piles of food, wrapping it all in a trash bag and then in a dirty chef’s jacket she found hanging beside the back door.

It was a stroke of luck otherwise unbelievable, and she’d managed it because of a Judge of all fucking random ass things. She even managed to make it back to their particular tunnel offshoot without losing any of her spoils, and for once no one walked away from that meal hungry. The food hadn’t kept long with the number of them to feed, but those few days had been glorious.

Still, it had been a terrible risk she’d taken, and to try to survive there, she’d need to take even more. And even with her gifts, there was no guarantee she’d make it home after all of them.

They needed a place that was _their_ territory, a place they could come to know better than anyone.

The tunnels, the city – they were other people’s hunting grounds. Other people’s territory, and they were still only children.

It was that uncomfortable truth that sent the remaining six of them – mutants all, though the signs were slight, an extra ear here, webbed fingers and toes there, and of course, Cassandra’s gifts – out of the tunnels and out through the massive culverts and grates to the wasteland beyond. In the tunnels, the children were still in the crosshairs of tunnel dwellers and Mega-City folk alike. But out there, there was only the desert – and the desert dwellers – to contend with. It had to be safer. Not safe, mind, but better than where they had been.

Two more of their number died in the first month beyond the wall, sacrifices to the Cursed Earth and its dangers. The remaining four of them learned from those deaths and survived, and, in time, thrived.

Over time, they encountered others, all mutants, all pushed beyond the boundaries of the Mega-City, all rejected by the “normal” people inside.

Some joined their small clan. Some merely passed them by. And the rest – they tried to take control of the little band, judging the children too weak to fight back.

They died.

No one mourned them.

And Cassandra’s clan lived, and grew. And day after day, the wasteland gained another moniker: it became “home.” It was a home that would have terrified people like that long ago Judge who’d made a feast possible for a band of mutant children, but for those same children, it was better than anywhere else they’d ever been.

\---

The first Judge Cassandra ever spoke to was also the first to give her a name for what she was. She’d been hunting, using her gifts to keep her out of sight of any other hunters, not wanting the complications a confrontation would cause. She was in too much of a hurry, stomach gnawing too hard at her with the hunger of her clan as well as her own. She hadn’t intended to stop when the figure called out to her, but it was the stripped down clothes he wore that drew her to a halt. The black and gold looked familiar, though nowhere near as impressive as the Judges she’d seen on the vidscreen. The uniform had been cut to pieces, the emblems and armor torn away by some angry hand.

It was when she slipped into his mind that she found an answer of sorts, vague though it was with her lack of context. “Exile. Exile! Who do they think they are – they can’t do this. I am a Judge! I am the fucking Law they can’t–”

“Are you lost?” she had asked, directly into his mind and, unfortunately for him in the short run, piquing his already molten anger.

“What the fuck? Get out of my head! Mutie psychic fucking freak! Do you know who I – ow! What the hell…”

Cassandra had intended to warn him about the sand viper circling silently in the rocks where he’d stopped to rant. Strangers, healthy ones especially, were rare in the desert, and there was always a chance, slight though it might be, that a stranger could turn out to be an ally, could come in time to be clan. But anyone who talked to her that way? Well, they clearly weren’t going to be an ally, and thus were not one of hers to protect.

Death was swift. Cassandra left the body where it lay. While meat that fresh was normally dragged back to the clan quick like, sand viper venom tended to have… unappetizing effects on a body.

The viper itself however – that would make a decent meal for any wasteland child. She pulled her machete from its strap across her back and lopped the snake’s head off in a single stroke while it tried to decide if it could actually eat the prey it had killed.

The Judge she didn’t think much on as she left with her kill and the spoils gleaned from a quick search of his person. His words however, left their mark. “Mutie” she knew, and “freak” and “fucking,” of course – it was Karma’s favorite word these days, but “psychic,” now that was new. She’d had just enough time in the Judge’s head before he died to parse out the context behind it. To really learn what a “psychic” was. What she was.

She liked the sound of the word, she decided. It was worth sharing with the others, even if only Aisling shared anything like Cassandra’s abilities. Even then, the enby could only hear surface thoughts if someone was within less than ten feet from them, and the picture perfect images Cassandra saw were out of their grasp completely. Still any word they could find to replace the others spat at them, was a worthy one.

\---

The first (and only) Judge Cassandra ever learned to trust appeared upon the Cursed Earth with one of the occasional training missions that ventured out into the wasteland from time to time, this Judge clearly leading the group instead of a mere rookie. For once Cassandra had been on the lookout for them, waiting for a training group, needing to use them for her own reasons, but unsure whether they would prove themselves proper servants of their flaunted Justice, or if they’d attack the mutant on principle.

She reached for the leader’s mind and gave a mental tap on his shoulder, the limit of what she could accomplish with a man in a lead lined suit and helmet. (Cassandra coveted those suits. Most of her clan were resistant to the radiation out in the wastes, but not all, and one of those suits might lengthen a life far beyond the expected. As she waited for the Judge to respond, she wondered idly if they might share a suit if the owner succumbed to the desert. It wasn’t unlikely: most of the training groups she’d observed had lost at least one if not more of their rookies before they returned to the city.)

Even from her hiding spot tucked between stones and scrub brush, she could see the lead Judge’s shoulders tense slightly at her touch, slowing his purposeful steps to turn his helmet almost imperceptibly in her direction. Cassandra decided it was enough of an introduction and stepped forward and out of her concealment, calling out with her ragged voice, “On your left. Do _not_ shoot me.”

It had taken years before she realized just how rarely she spoke aloud, her siblings never bothering to remind her to use her mouth instead of her mind which the latter had been so much safer in the tunnels. Now, it was only during times like these, when she needed to approach strangers that she had to remember to force her voice into speech.

Unsurprisingly, her words had an immediate effect – the rookies all spun in shock fumbling for their weapons as she rolled her eyes and lifted her empty hands in that unofficial sign for “I’m unarmed.” The only one who didn’t reach for his weapon (because he already had it in hand and had been carrying it properly unlike his rookies) or raise it at the approaching “threat” was the leader.

“Stand down,” he ordered, sounding as annoyed by the idiots in his charge as she was. “A threat isn’t going to just announce itself.”

“But sir,” one of them began, “that’s gotta be a mutant, right? That’s – that’s –”

“Not a shoot on sight, especially out here when _all_ of us are likely to be mutants,” Cassandra interrupted, glad she’d gotten close enough she didn’t have to yell and strain her voice any further. “That doesn’t make us the enemy.” She dismissed the rookie and turned to face the leader, studying him through the goggles she wore to keep the dust and sunlight at least a little out of her eyes. “We’re still people Judges are supposed to protect, hell we’re still _people_.”

Another rookie spoke up, apparently missing the fact that Cassandra had been speaking mostly to their trainer. “Judges are supposed to protect _citizens_ , not freaks.”

Cassandra pushed her goggles up so this time the idiot could see her roll her eyes. “Where the fuck do you think the mutants out here come from? Radiation’s a bitch on the reproductive system.” The faces of the rookies, what she could see of them around their own goggles and the few helmets like the leader’s, looked unconvinced, and Cassandra sighed. “I was born in the city. So were all of my clan. We _are_ your citizens, just not ones your precious Hall of Justice wants to claim. We end up out here because…”

“Because there’s nowhere else for you to go,” the lead Judge finished, startling his recruits as much as Cassandra with the response from the otherwise silent Judge. His voice was deep, with a rough edge not unlike hers, though she guess it was more natural on him than due to a lack of use like on her. “Why are you here?”

She eyed him, debating on how to answer, and whether or not she could safely bring up the real reason she’d approached the rookies. Finally she spoke. “We don’t get Judges out here often, but that doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally need them.” He didn’t respond, clearly waiting for her to finish. “There’s a clan killing folks for food.”

“Cannibal freaks,” one of the rookies said and turned to spit on the ground, a stupid waste of moisture out in the desert.

“We’re all cannibals out here,” she said, then went on before the horrified rookies could catch up. “So are the rest of you, or at least you probably have been. I wouldn’t think the Academy has high class rations.”

“The… the fuck?” one of them managed, and Cassandra felt as much as heard the leader’s sigh of annoyance, the proximity letting her a little more into his mind, though only barely to the surface. He twitched slightly as if sensing the intrusion, and she pull herself free with a nod of apology.

“What did you think ‘resyk’ referred to?” she said patiently. “The term ‘meat wagon’ isn’t a joke. People are meat; just most folks don’t like to think about it. And it’s usually the poor and poor fucks in Iso that end up forced to eat the cheap shit. Yours might look like other food, but it still starts as meat.”

“She’s not wrong,” the lead Judge said, and ignored the concerned questions of “Sir?” from the rookies at his back as the truth of what she’d said started to sink in. “That said, why would you come to us about other cannibals if you aren’t any different?”

It was a fair question, and one some of the clan had struggled with, the ones who were a little less poverty stricken before they were forced out into the Cursed Earth. “In the city and in most of the clans out here: the dead are meat. But we don’t kill to get it – folks die first, natural causes or otherwise, but we won’t murder for it. There are other things to eat in the lean times.”

“But the others are killing for it.” It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway, glad at least one of them seemed to understand.

“They’ve slaughtered two clans that I know of, and it’s only a matter of time before they come for mine.” She kept her eyes on the leader, _Dredd_ , his name glimpsed at the front of his mind like a gift all at once.

“So you come to us.”

“So I came to you.”

There was a long moment of silence as the pair of them surveyed each other, and just like the name, Cassandra felt a wash of respect begin to tinge his surface thoughts. “Understood. You ready to lead us there?”

She nodded. The ghost of a smile twisted his lips under the helmet, as he said, “You look ready.”

\---

It would not be their only meeting, the steadfast Judge and the wary Wasteland psychic, but it would set the tone for every meeting after. Mega-City Judge, Cursed Earth mutant. Both seeking Justice in the desert; both finding it in each other.


End file.
